Manttra 8-Quart Smart Pressure Cooker
- An 8-quart stainless steel pressure cooker for when you must have pinto beans NOW
- Has both a pressure control knob and visual pressure indicator, because these things are very safe now (really)
- Auto lock system, which is great until you realize you left your keys in the pressure cooker
- 12ps or 8psi settings, which may be what makes it “smart”
- Model: OPJ-HW122 (One of the major offenses of the hyphenated model number, beyond aesthetics, is the immediate cost in searchability. These results, for instance, get tangled with an SEC filing about a natural gas pipeline in Louisiana, we think"
Known To Cook Under Pressure
We all know what being under pressure feels like. It’s the terror of knowing what the world is about, watching some good friends scream “let me out!” Doy.
But how does that relate to cooking? Why does sealing lentils in an airtight chamber like this make them cook, like, twice as fast?
The explanation begins with mac and cheese. Have you ever noticed that instructions for some boiled food tells you to cook longer at high elevations? That’s because the air pressure at higher elevations in lower, so the boiling point (the maximum temperature of liquid water) is lower, meaning your Velveeta is cooking is cooler water.
Following that logic, if you cooked your cheesy shells while descending to the center of the Earth (digging is hungry work), the air pressure would be higher and the cooking temperature would be lower.
This pressure cooker, then, is like your own little slice of the subterranean abyss, and you won’t have to contend with the t-rexes or Brendan Frasers known to haunt it.
But could we do even better? Gasses get hotter when compressed (that’s how a car piston works), so if you compressed a cooker heater while boiling lentils, you could achieve an even higher temperature and lower cooking time.
But how could you possibly compress a pressure cooker? Hmm…